i've heard there is less of a chance, but yea, as long as ur using cfw and sony finds out, they will ban you... best ways to flag youself for bann- use homebrew while signed into psn or with internet enabled- play blackops games, or any game using treyarch servers- use cheats in games or mods- play early releases.

stay away from those things and your chances decrease considerably, sony can always tell you are using cfw no matter what you do, but if you do things to get yourself flagged, thats when they will check you out and ban you

That's all pretty great advise. I would add that its worth creating a seperate PSN account especially for CFW. And to run this program (then PS_ninja) before logging in will also hide your real (original) console_id. So preventing your OFW accounts from being at risk to some future ban.

It's hard to know what infos Sony are using to identify CFW users. Since the CFW 4.30 is mostly the same as the OFW 4.30, you can only imagine if it's not app logs / homebrew apps activity then its filesystem, or a test for the hacked syscalls / peek/poke etc. patches, or the 3.55 keys signing of the CFW. Gotta to be one of those! (since there's not really anything else).

But for sure it can only be in data packets sent back to Sony servers from your console. TCP dumps are easily grabbable in ethereal/wireshark. As to whether you really see anything obvious from a side-by-side comparison. I don't yet know. But here's the recipe:

Check your OFW console. Ensure it is on 4.30 OFW.

Hook it up through your PC on the LAN (local LAN proxy), enter in the PS3's network settings window.

Take TCP dumps in wireshark, all of the PS3 whilst its connecting to PSN, and also many other common situations.

Downgrade your console and then install Rogero 4.30 CFW.

Install or update Multiman Stealth.

Run PS_Unban to hide your real console_id, and register a new PSN account for this CFW testing.

Take more TCP dumps. Again, with as many situations / scenarios as you can possibly think of.

Uninstall Multiman Stealth, or overwrite it to Multiman Standard (keep going if you have not been banned yet).

Take more TCP dumps.

Compare all these 2-3 sets of many TCP dumps. Scrutinizing the differences. Give yourself a huge headache.

Good idea to Search/Replace the first set of TCP dumps (the OFW ones) to obscure your real console_id.

Publish TCP dumps in public and tell others. (who has done this yet for 4.30? No one? Why?).

Hope that more accomplished people than your good self (or gurus) out of the kindness of their heart can see what's really going on.

And finally:

Once Sony to release their next OFW update, then go back to rinse/repeat cycle the whole process again from the very beginning.

It is possible to reset your PS3 back to OFW again, but only if you didn't reveal your original console_id (or somehow got another one), and have a hardware flasher permanently installed.